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No matter what type of grass you have, summer heat will leave your lawn struggling. If you have a warm-season grass (Bermuda, Zoysia or St. Augustine, for example), the best thing you can do right now is to roll back on the nitrogen-rich fertilizer and give your lawn a rest.

“Don’t apply anything that has nitrogen in it after August,” said Lynwood Blackmon of the DeKalb County Extension. “You don’t want to encourage new growth when the grass is ready to go into a dormant state.”

There’s no rest for the weary, though, if you’ve got a cool-season grass such as fescue. Now that you’ve worked hard to keep it thriving through the summer, the time has come to do everything, Blackmon said. September and October are the best months for reseeding and planting sod, and it needs to be fertilized in September and November. Don’t fertilize when it’s wet because that can burn the grass.

Now is also the time to put down pre-emergent weed control for all types of grass, Blackmon said, and be sure to activate it with water. Spreading it on the lawn just before a rain is the best way to ensure a weed-free lawn next spring.

One last tip from the experts: Don’t put down seed and pre-emergent herbicides at the same time. You need to wait about three to six months after seeding. 

Check out the video above for more lawn tips for this fall.